About WTF Just Happened Today? A brief history.
tl;dr I doomscroll so you don’t have to. And then I compress the chaos into a sane, once-a-day update that helps normal people make the news make sense.
About: Like many, I found the 2016 election cycle to be deeply confusing and frustrating. Even though I’m a news junkie, I struggled to keep up with all the articles, blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, newsletters, podcasts, and randomly clipped broadcast news segments floating around social media – and still make sense of everything. I still don’t see how any “normal” person can actually stay informed. We have a scarcity of time available to consume news, but the media environment is optimized for an abundance of information. So in response I started WTFJHT as a personal project to establish a better, healthier relationship with the news by logging, organizing, and summarizing the biggest stories of the day so that I could make the news make sense. While it was supposed to be a personal challenge to chronicle the daily shock and awe of the Trump administration’s first 100 days, but it quickly became my full-time job.
Orientation and expectation setting: My job is to help distill news that deserves attention into a clear, understandable, and accurate first draft of history – even if it is uncomfortable, unpopular, or upsetting! – for normal people who might not otherwise engage with the news. And while I rely on verified facts as reported by multiple trusted news sources – which I carefully cite!! – as with any historical narrative the first draft will necessarily require future revisions as more information becomes available. Practically speaking, WTFJHT covers the news through the lens of the executive branch specifically – and the president in particular – followed by the legislative and judicial branches in general, and in that order. Naturally people will demand more from me than this scope and framing allows for, and that’s fine. But if your politics, religion, or ideology dictate that you pick a side and expect me to cater to it, then you might be disappointed.
Editorial standards & practices
The premise of WTFJHT is simple: answer what happened, what the facts are, cite the source, and move on.
This is the news through the lens of one person making decisions about coverage, much the same way a front page editor does for a newspaper. With every blurb, I’m making a news-value judgment about what changed and what has consequences.
Here’s what you can expect:
- Neutral-ish on purpose. It’s not intentionally partisan. It’s purposefully fact-based.
- No commentary, opinion, or analysis. I focus on clearly and concisely saying what happened, citing the primary sources, and moving on.
- Clear uncertainty. When details are disputed, unverified, or still developing, I say so.
- Corrections happen. If I get something wrong or something changes, I update and correct it. The goal is a clean record of what happened rather than a perfect performance.
The longer version, including how I choose stories, how sourcing works, how I handle updates, and what “neutral-ish” means in practice, lives in the FAQ.
Core values:
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Transparency. WTFJHT is open sourced and hosted as a public repository on GitHub. Anybody can view the change log at anytime for any post, make pull requests to fix grammar, typos, facts, sources, etc., as well as contribute code.
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Choice. I cite every reference by the name of the original source and link to it clearly. Where appropriate, I’ll include additional sources to the same or similar news.
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Clear expectations. The premise of WTFJHT is simple: answer what happened, what the facts are, cite the source, and move on.
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Consistency. Every day that I meet the expectations I set, I earn trust with the audience. For every day that I fail to meet the expectations I set for myself, I lose trust. It’s that simple.
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Create more value than I capture. I’m not here to get rich. I’m here to help you make the news make sense. That’s why there are…
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No strings attached. There’s no business model trickery here. No ads. No content gates. No selling of data. I have a website and a newsletter, and I never stray from any of the above. To be clear, my business model is as follows: my work is free, but supported entirely by an optional, pay-whatever-you-want membership model where you don’t get anything other than the satisfaction of supporting something you’d like to see exist in the world. As a result, the business model is direclty aligned with the value created for readers.
This project is open sourced and hosted as a public GitHub repository. Log new issues, comments, feedback here.
-Matt Kiser
[email protected]
WTF Just Happened Today?
505 Broadway E #211
Seattle, WA 98102 USA